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The Future of AI: a Non-Alarmist Viewpoint
Nerval's Lobster writes: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the dangers posed by building truly intelligent machines. A lot of well-educated and smart people, including Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, have stated they are fearful about the dangers that sentient Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses to humanity. But maybe it makes more sense to focus on the societal challenges that advances in AI will pose in the near future (Dice link), rather than worrying about what will happen when we eventually solve the titanic problem of building an artificial general intelligence that actually works. Once the self-driving car becomes a reality, for example, thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers and delivery people will be out of a job practically overnight, as economic competition forces companies to make the switch to self-driving fleets as quickly as possible. Don't worry about a hypothetical SkyNet, in other words; the bigger issue is what a (dumber) AI will do to your profession over the next several years.
the problem with that is cultural and ideological not a problem with AI, Capitalism *requires* scarcity in order for certain business models to work and this is why AI makes people nervous, It removes scarcity of labor,
We've already seen this with the internet where it provided freedom of information leading to copyright issues begin essentially unenforceable however we now have governments en-mass attempting to put the jack back in the box with draconian despotic measures threats of cultural apocalypse. Which is a real shame that they lack such imagination.
Historically Feudalism described our societal structure, with the technological limits on transporting people around it was the best we could manage at the time despite how horrible it was. With the increase in movement wealth in the mercantile classes increased and there power came to supplant notions of bloodline/dynasty dominance.
Capitalism is likewise horrible but probably the best we can manage given our current technological limitations. I'm hopeful within my lifetime we will replace it with something better But we do need to change peoples attitude towards work, ownership and entitlement... If we don't then capitalism will invariably collapse into despotism.
Keep in mind that we're in this together. A large economic collapse due to robotics and AI advances will compel the american populace to find ways of supporting itself, be it through complete economic regulation (ie communism) or through philanthropic capitalism. After all, what's the point of building robots for profit if that profit can't be realized?
One thing is for certain though: things will get worse before they get better. Our hands need to be forced.
What happened to get us all to sell ourselves out so cheaply and willingly accept the idea that a few bastards should end up with the bulk of the nations wealth while our children are faced with a future with no jobs and parents whose retirement funds cannot pay to take care of them?
Conservatism happened.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yep, I've mentioned this before on slashdot comments.
The people are gonna rise up way before the machines do.
I'm actually quoting what Andrew McAfee said in a talk about automation and jobs. And indirectly the book he's a co-author off: the second machine age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Probably one of the most important things to change is education. If certain types of jobs disappear you'd want people to have had the education to adopt and do the jobs that haven't been done yet or before. That way we'll grow the economy and all benefit from it. This is how we dealt with the 'first machine age', the industrial revolution.
And we might start to think about something like 'negative income tax', just in case we need it, maybe we just need it to help us through a transition. An old concept which Nixon almost got through congress. It gives people some money if they really need it and rewards people when they put in more effort.
New things are always on the horizon
Numbers mean nothing against firepower. We also live in the Surveillance Age, and any malcontent would be immediately detected and dealt with. Without leadership, people cannot do anything. Besides, what are we gonna do? Kill off the 1% that controls all of the infrastructure and the resources? Even if we could - and we cannot since they have the full might of the State on their side - we would die off anyway because quite simply the ability to run the whole organization is - purposely - beyond us. As for the rest of the world... The One Percenters exist there as well and where it does not reside because the living conditions are beneath them, their influence is felt. The world belongs to them. It's been over since a long time.